Contardo Calligaris, educator: notes on the educationalizing bias in the circulation of psychoanalytic ideas in Brazil

Abstract

This exploratory study examined the newspaper columns of* Folha de S.Paulo *written by Contardo Calligaris between 1999 and 2021 and published weekly in the newspaper. The aim was to describe and analyze an initiative undertaken by the psychoanalyst outside the technical-professional framework of psychoanalysis, capable of driving a discursive game made possible by effective verdictive mechanisms. The empirical archive of the study was stablished and analyzed according to two complementary levels: first, the construction of a thematic map of the material; and then, the reordering of the discursive mass through the assembly of the statements in circulation based on the following analytical vectors: Psychoanalysis/psychoanalysts; Brazil/Brazilians; Education; Society; Subjectivity; and I, Contardo. The processing of the material made it clear that Calligaris, by positioning himself as an interpreter of the present, promoted the spread of a discursive logic that disposes, incites, and ultimately manages to govern the ways by which the subjects of the present (self-)constitute themselves, according to an operative nexus centered on a psychologized interiority.The writings of Calligaris are marked by the effort to comment on the challenges of life and human relations. The psychoanalyst’s long-standing work in the aforementioned newspaper denotes his intellectual authority, as well as the recognition and legitimization of his ideas. His work transcends the vulgarization of the psychoanalytic discursive arsenal and results in the multiplication of a properly educationalizing environment.